


Time Immemorial

by nerdyydragon



Series: Kingsman Tumblr Ficlets [13]
Category: Kingsman (2014), Kingsman (2015), Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: I tagged it major because they DO die, M/M, Reincarnation AU, Soulmate AU, but it isnt really sad, i also tagged it teen just to be safe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-18 06:00:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8151523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdyydragon/pseuds/nerdyydragon
Summary: They know each other across stars, before people and time and planets, and they will know each other at the end.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own anything you recognize. Seriously.

They know each other before they know their own names, hours filled with casual touches on hunts and around a communal fire that will be gone in a few days, all traces of the camp lost to the recesses of wind and rain and time.

They watch the sky-fire dance through the starlight, and learn what it means to find your soul, know what the gods said about humanity, about the giants being split in two, cursed to wander in search of their pair.

They live, they love. They survive. But winter is hard that year, and they go quickly. Found one morning in a last embrace.

—

They are knights - in truth, Gary is a knight, and Harry is a prince. They had lived many lives alone, searching. Waiting, hoping. Harry knights Gary into his personal guard to keep him close, because his father’s kingdom denounces the old gods, the old ways of fire and myth and magick.

Together they are an unstoppable force on the battlefield, and in the court. Gary provides insight into dilemmas Harry faces, gives him ideas and approaches he hadn’t thought of to introduce to the court.

Harry’s father decrees that he take a wife, doesn’t respect the bond he has with Gary, so for sake of appearances they hold a ball, hoping to sabotage any chances of Harry marrying. But Harry is struck by one young woman, against his better judgement and clouded by mead and sorrow and internalized hatred, and they leave together. Gary sees them go, follows them at a distance back to Harry’s rooms, hears the door lock. Breaks down the hall to his own quarters and  _ sobs _ until he has no tears left to cry, and sleeps.

The next time they meet is in war, Gary at his prince’s shoulder, heart aching and bleeding but no less loving of the man to his left. He takes an arrow meant for the crown prince, piercing his mail at the right angle to be a shot straight into his heart. Harry holds him as he dies, crying apologies into his chest as though power of will might save him. It doesn’t. His last words are a choked:

“ _ I forgive you. I love you. _ ” And then his heart beats its last and Harry wails, anger against his father and himself and the war bubbling up from his chest and into his soul and out through his mouth. He places one last lingering kiss to Gary’s swiftly chilling mouth, breathing out an ‘ _ I love you _ ’ of his own, tears falling fresh onto his cheeks, and closes the dead man’s eyes, all traces of life and love and hope gone from the grey-green-blue vortex that had captivated him.

He is reckless.

He is merciless.

Ultimately, he is victorious.

But he still feels as though he has lost.

—

The two meet again, centuries later, when the remains of their regiments are pooled together for an assault against Germany. They know, instantly, as though waking from a dream.

They spend nights quiet in their tent, not making any noise, relearning each other because it has been so so so long, even longer than the last, and they had grown bone-weary in waiting.

“Harry?” Eggsy calls, one morning dawning brighter and clearer and more cheerful than it had any right to even though the war had finally ended. Not with the peace of the countless dead around them. No one can tell which bodies belonged to the enemy and which were theirs - death had come for each of them and did not discriminate. “Harry?” He calls again, hoping against stubborn cynicism that Harry was one of the countless lying forlorn and broken and forgotten in the mud.

He finds him, after what seems like hours. Maybe it had been, he doesn’t know. He holds him, railing against the knowledge that he was dead.

Their time was too short.

_ This _ , he thinks, is what Harry felt as Eggsy had died in his arms. He closed Harry’s eyes and put the fallen man’s identification tags around his neck, throwing the body over his shoulder and taking it to where he might have it sent home.

—-

It is different, this time. Harry is older, so much older than Eggsy; he had been reborn too quickly. Maybe it was because the other man had lived longer. He didn’t know. But staring down into the eyes of a young child and knowing, he couldn’t help feel that this time was different. That maybe it would be their last.

He tells Eggsy so, the next time the meet, the next time they are alone. Eggsy is nearly finished his training and Harry tells him that no matter what happens, no matter how disappointed he might be if - only ever  _ if _ , he knows that Eggsy can do it - Eggsy fails, that he will still love him.

Eggsy can’t shoot his beloved pug but he  _ can _ threaten the life of their regent, and then he goes to Harry, who says hurtful things because although he is glad that Eggsy can be safe from the life he himself leads the younger man is now in insurmountably more danger because he cannot be privy to who could hurt him.

Then he goes to Kentucky, and he is dead.

Eggsy screams into the face of the laptop and this time  _ does _ commit regicide, and then in his anguish, which he has felt before but seems so much larger this time because maybe Harry was right,  _ maybe that was the end _ , maybe he’ll never get to see him again and tell him how much he loves him, he takes out an entire mountain bunker full of people and watches in grim fascination as the heads of world leaders explode, gleefully javelins a lethal prosthetic into the man who had taken his heart from him.

He continues like this for several months, getting formally inducted into Kingsman and taking his love’s former title, continuing to avenge his death.

—

It’s approaching springtime when Merlin announces that they’ve finally found their new Arthur. He calls a round table meeting, and Eggsy sits silently at the right hand of a ghost - a man he watched have a bullet placed into the upper left of his cranium and crumple to the ground, crimson blood staining the hot asphalt of a car park in rural Kentucky.

The meeting ends, and Eggsy doesn’t move from his chair; he stares blankly at the table before him, having absorbed none of the contents of the conversation that went on around him. There’s a warm hand on his shoulder, turning him and pulling him from his chair. It’s Harry; he goes easily.

He should be  _ angry _ .

_ Seven months _ , he was gone, not a word, not a sign, not  _ anything _ . Did Harry love him, this time, like he said he had? Or was he placating him with an empty promise?

Harry pulls him forward and kisses him hard on the mouth, claiming, teaching,  _ needing _ him to understand. When he pulls away he is trembling, they both are, their foreheads rested together breathing in the other’s air.

“I may be a king in this time,” Harry says, barely a whisper. “But I have  _ always  _ worshipped you.”

Eggsy throws his arms around his neck and kisses him again, this one wet, though whose tears they were they couldn’t know.

—

Harry passes softly this time, having said his final goodbyes to Eggsy for he knows in his heart that this last life was lived a full one and that his soul would move on. At the age of 76, old for a man in his profession even if he had been confined to a desk and minimal physical exertion, he is finally at peace.

Eggsy continues his work, likes to think he isn’t any more reckless than he had been before Harry’s death. Lives a fulfilling life, and sees their daughter married.

—

Fifteen years after Harry’s passing, a new star patterns Orion’s Belt.


End file.
